Sexy vs. Slutty: A Woman's World

I was having this debate with a couple of friends of mine, but I think there was starting to be some confusion over what exactly was being debated, so I thought I’d make a separate rant here.
It all started with a casual discussion about the Spice Girls, which moved onto fashion, which then delved into how girls are treated like sluts because of what they wear.
Without going into the particulars of the conversation, I’ll just go into how I view this subject.
When we were young girls, our moms would dress us up in pretty dresses, take us to tea parties with our other girl friends, tie pretty ribbons in our hair, give us shiny black dress shoes, and teach us how to polish our pretty black dress shoes, so that they wouldn’t lose their shine. We were given Barbie dolls and make-up stands, pink outfits and pink walls and pink toys … It was very clear when we were young, what girls were expected to be.
We grew up watching singers like Shania Twain, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera strut their stuff on stage, wearing gradually less and less clothing. They would gyrate their hips and dance dirty with boys, and people seemed to love them for it. Shania Twain made guy shirts sexy, only to strip down into more revealing attire in her video, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman”. Britney Spears gave pedophiles something to grin about when she donned pigtails and “sports” bras for her video “Baby One More Time”. Christina Aguilera gave ass-less chaps - oops, “riding pants” - a whole new light in her video “Dirty”, never mind the degrading meaning behind the lyrics. The list goes on. And these were the idols that we grew up watching on TV, idolizing and imitating. These artists whose voices carried such powerful meanings for us, and who we viewed as “sexy”. Every young woman, no matter who she is or where she comes from, wants to feel sexy. How do most people do this? They dress how they feel “sexy” is. Maybe that’s a tight dress, maybe that’s a t-shirt and jeans, maybe that’s a short skirt and tube-top … sexy is such a versatile description now.
“Slutty”, however, is not. How many girls and women have been called sluts, by males or females, friends or foes, or even just some stranger on the street? For what? For dressing sexy? We are being punished for mimicking the idols that the world told us were sexy …they were popular, and loved, and respected … why should we not want to be like them?
There are women out there who must button their shirts up to the highest button, must cover up their bodies, for fear that their husbands or fathers will view their attire as “promiscuous”, and punish them with a beating. There are women in the world who must hide their very faces from the world, because their culture and society says that’s the way it must be. Now we come over to North America, a world that seems separate from the rest of the world. Girls can walk around in short-shorts and halter tops, and do it proudly. Women are getting breast implants and liposuction, dieting until they are blue in the face. Society puts so much pressure on women to look a certain way, and these women do their damndest to try and conform to that pressure. But what happens when they do? What happens when a girl walks around in a shirt that reveals her cleavage and midriff? What happens when a girl wears a short skirt, and absentmindedly bends over to pick something up? They are hooted at, sneered at, suffered with catcalls and derogatory names. Sure, there are a number of girls who enjoy this treatment, who dress this way because they want people to notice their bodies in such a way … but so what if they do? It’s their body, and therefore their choice. Sadly, the girls who dress how they want because THEY want to feel sexy, THEY want to feel empowered, are treated with the same reactions. And what’s worse? You then have other girls going behind their backs and calling them sluts to their friends. Some have the “steel ovaries” to actually go up to someone and say it to their face - and what happens then? The girl defends her body, her choices, and she’s the one who is punished.
You don’t need to dress in sexy outfits and wear revealing clothing to be a slut … clothing does not make a person a whore. But because society has identified “whores” in a certain way, anyone who dares to accentuate their body with “promiscuous” attire is seen as a whore. Skanks, sluts, whores, etc … a whole new vocabulary exists inside the walls of a high school.
But let’s go beyond high school. Another comment that I read recently, was a man stating that if women want men to look at their faces and not their chest, they shouldn’t wear low-cut blouses and “shiny” necklaces. Sexist? Oh, yes. A grown woman, who has survived the traumas of high school, and has risen through the ranks of the corporate world, is then degraded and insulted by her peers when they would rather stare at her chest, than listen to what she has to say. This is despicable. Why should a woman have to don masculine attire just to be granted a modicum of respect? Why should a woman have to hide away her breasts, just to save men from their inability to keep their wandering eyes on topic? What’s next? Shall we wrap our breasts with tensor bandages, plaster them against our chest, and slide on a man’s dress shirt and tie?
We are supposed to be living in a world of equality - emphasis on “supposed”. Women are supposed to be equal members of society … but then we hear them referred to as sluts because their skirts are “too short” by someone else’s standards. Clearly, we are not as evolved as some people seem to think that we are.
A woman’s body is her body, no one else’s. No one else should be able to dictate the clothes that she wears, or how she wears them …